Officials, companies huddle for Milford Road widening project

Friday

Feb 8, 2013 at 8:52 AM

Delays from intricate, revised permitting applications have put off the start of the next phase of the Milford Road/State Route 2001 widening project by six months to June for letting of contacts and a construction startup in early August.

Wayne Witkowski

Delays from intricate, revised permitting applications have put off the start of the next phase of the Milford Road/State Route 2001 widening project by six months to June for letting of contacts and a construction startup in early August.

That conclusion was reached in a Lehman Township Municipal Building meeting room packed with lawmakers, including state Sen. Lisa Baker, R-20, and state Rep. Rosemary Brown, R-189,as well as representatives from agencies and companies partnering in the six-mile, $24.5 million project that is expected to take three construction seasons. It will extend from Little Egypt Road north to three-tenths of a mile north into Delaware Township, a few hundred feet beyond Log and Twig Road at a Pocono Mountain Lake Estates private community entrance.

"We're so far along the process, we're on the home stretch," said Kevin James, technical manager-highways for consulting engineering company Michael Baker Jr. Inc. that is overseeing the project for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Met-Ed, Verizon and Blue Ridge Cable as well as Pike County Conservation District attended with Pike County commissioner Matt Osterberg and former commissioner Harry Forbes from Gov. Tom Corbett's Northeast Regional Office.

The National Park Service was invited and did not attend and the state Department of Environmental Protection was not invited but will be notified about monthly update meetings, says Lehman Township Board of Supervisors Chairman John Sivick, who called the meeting.

Project 402

It's called Project 402, and plans began taking shape in 2011. The project is mapped out in 198 pages of approved plans involving 81 acres. It is the third of four phases of the road-widening project. The first phase started on the northern end from Milford Borough to the Route 739 intersection. After that, Project 401 was completed in early fall under Leeward Construction when it was announced that there would be a let for contracts for the next phase in December, a date delayed by permitting issues.

Pike County Conservation District completed its review June 24 to a submission to state DEP, which responded with 19 pages of recommendations and subsequent time-consuming modifications in the plan. Conservation District Executive Director Sally Corrigan said an "adequate" review was completed in December for the DEP, which sent back a letter Jan. 11 on stormwater management issues.

Verizon and Blue Ridge will jointly carry lines of service on the poles as they are moved, and the companies involved said they do not anticipate any holdup.

James said he expects permits to be in place

for the June letting of contracts.

Three phases needed

The previous project was split into two phases

but this one needs three phases, which Forbes said comes from straightening many curves and greater use of landfill. All right-of-way property acquisitions are completed, said James.

Sivick said that traffic control from the previous project was and remains a "huge concern for residents," but James said there will no lane closures needed during construction.

"It's two miles longer than the last project, and there are different reviewers, different techniques involved since the last phase," James told the gathering. "The level of details is different from what was on the other one. It got a lot more complicated for this section. We have the riparian buffer, which we did not have to deal with from the previous section in 2007 and 2008."

Debbie Noone, PennDOT assistant director of design, said buffers from high-quality streams have complicated and delayed this part of the road-widening project.

"I'm very troubled it would take this long to go through a permitting process," Baker said. "We have to move forward and try to expedite approvals."

Brown said organizations communicating face-to-face saves time, which, she said, saves money as things continue to rise in cost.

The utility companies agreed that their plans are in place. The construction plans show the current location of new poles but do not indicate new locations. James said indicating those changes on such a big plan would not allow plans to be submitted for permitting review in time.

"We will have very little effect on the National Park Service (property). We have a handful of poles for permission to move on the right of way and to get permission for tree trimming (from landowners). Can that (permission) affect the project, 'Yes,' but it usually works out," Met-Ed Supervisor of Engineers in East Stroudsburg Lyman Morris said. "Blue Ridge and Verizon have been meeting on this and have very little problems."